


First Touch Of Hands

by tielan



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, The Angry Goose Of Destiny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-05 10:04:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15861438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: A meeting in a marketplace. A wild goose attack. And hands touching hands...





	First Touch Of Hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thinlizzy2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinlizzy2/gifts).



> Dear recipient, I had something else almost completely written for you, and then a completely new inspiration struck... I hope this works for you!
> 
> Also for Trope Bingo 2017 'Soulbonds/Soul Mates'.

 

" _Do you think it makes a difference that the predominant strain in the founding of our country was Puritan separatism_  
_rather than the broadminded and curious attitudes of the Elizabethan age?_  
_Do you think that it's irrelevant to our national pathologies that we were founded to be a haven for a bunch of nuts_  
_who wanted to opt out of secular law and society and create a theocratic state?_ "

~ Dr. Daniel Jackson to General Jack O'Neill  
_SGA: The Furies_ by Jo Graham ~

 

 

The central markets of the Wakandan empire were beautiful and busy, filled with people talking and laughing, selling and bartering.

Wandering in the midst of it, Bucky was glad he’d come.

He’d been pulling on a shirt when it struck him that he’d probably stick out at the Wakandan markets like a cornstalk in a wheatfield. But while the majority of the people out in the marketplace had dark skin, there were no shortage of foreigners – not only from the Europs, but also Arabians, Hindi, and Asiatics, and even a number of Roanoki – doubtless made bold by the upcoming marriage treaty, and looking for new opportunities for trade and intrigue.

On the trip over, Bucky had speculated what might bring the Wakandans to the point of a marriage treaty with the Roanoki. “It’s not like they need our goodwill,” he said in discussion with Sam. “They’re powerful enough to take on anyone, including the Ch’in confederation. What do they get out of a treaty with little old us?”

“Little old us covers an area of at least half Africa,” Sam pointed out. “And we have some pretty good trade routes. Particularly thanks to the treaty agreement with the Cueva for Pacific-Atlantic access – to say nothing of the railroad going through. I was thinking it’s more that they don’t seem like the kind to sacrifice a royal princess – and one who’s already published in her academic circles – just to make a treaty.” Sam shrugged. “I could be mistaken.”

He wasn’t. Bucky had watched the Wakandan delegates as they greeted them, had watched King T’Challa and his guardswomen as they walked through the assembly, and had confirmed his initial estimates of the King: a man who treasured what he had.

The Princess Shuri– the King’s sister – had been absent at their initial meeting. She wasn’t feeling up to attending, thanks to the initial phase of her menstrual cycle, which the Wakandan King had announced was the reason for his sister’s apologies that evening without a trace of embarrassment – like women had menstrual cycles every day.

Which, Bucky had to admit, they did. It just wasn’t spoken of in public back in Roanoke.

Yes, there were a lot of things to which Steve would have to become accustomed when he married the Princess of Wakanda. And Bucky would have to become accustomed to them too – at least while he was here. Eventually, he might go back to Roanoke, or he might see what he might become here in Wakanda. He hadn’t yet decided – there was time for that yet.

Anyway, he’d chosen to go exploring in the city and assured the Hospitaller that he didn’t need an escort and he would ask for directions if necessary. He’d left Sam to flirt with the King’s bodyguards, and left Steve with the injunction not to do anything which might let the King’s cool-eyed cousin think for one moment that Steve was one whit less committed to the happiness of the Princess Shuri than absolute and utter devotion.

Meandering through the open marketplace, dressed like a merchantsman with a little money but not so much it would be worth beating him up, Bucky walked past stalls selling food, and ones piled high with foodstuffs. He laughed at the goose-girl who was piping a little song in the open square by the marketplace water fountain while her geese ‘danced’ in trained steps. He admired intricately carved wooden hair combs but shook his head when the merchant tried to sell him one ‘for his lady love’, observed a seamstress whip-stitching an embroidered hem onto trousers for a customer, and paused by a display of silverwork by a man who had his own cart parked at the edge of the marketplace.

There was quite a crowd around the man’s workstation, although he’d set up a little ‘fence’ of string and _kovu_ stalks, on which hung a sign that read, ‘ _Employed by the Princess Shuri of Wakanda to make her wedding bracelets._ ’

According to the whispers that ran through the crowd, he was working on the bracelets now – or, at least, on a design that was very similar to the one that the Princess had commissioned from him.

Frankly, Bucky was a little surprised that the guy was allowed to advertise like that. Whether or not the Princess had actually commissioned him was a moot point; the Wakandans had a finely-tuned sense of fairness, and it probably didn’t extend to drumming up more business by claiming that you were making designs for royalty in the marketplace.

Still, he paused to watch the man carefully drilling and cutting and filing holes in an intricate design, and tried to make sense of the fledgeling pattern. Leaves, perhaps? Or flames? Feathers?

After a moment, he turned away and headed back into the marketplace, his interest lost. Besides, even if it interested him, it wasn’t as though he wouldn’t have the chance to admire the Princess’ wristlets when she wore them.

Above the chatter of the crowd, the goose-girl’s piping rang out, a chirpy little melody that trilled and rollicked and made Bucky turn his head towards it with a smile—

The smile faded as a giant bird descended on him with a _HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK_!

He ducked it, his hands coming up to protect his face as the thing flew at him, wings flapping madly, beak outstretched, feet waggling as it tried to land on him.

“What? No! Get off!”

He struck out at the beast with one hand as it buffeted him with its wings, but it somehow evaded his arm and pecked at his ear. He tried to slap it away, tried to grab it, but although his hand brushed through feather, he couldn’t seem to get a grip on the thing.

Shouts and cries of surprise lifted up through the marketplace at the disturbance. Bucky barely heard them. Everything around him was feathers and beaks, flapping air, and goose musk. He stepped back and dodged, trying to evade it or brush it away, but the damn thing came with him, honking like a lunatic.

The cries around him grew louder, but he wasn’t trying to hurt it – dammit, he _wasn’t_ hurting it! He couldn’t even _touch_ the stupid thing!

But it kept flapping at him and – oh shit – pecking at his face! He couldn’t even see where he was going, could only step back and hope he wasn’t about to back into anyone—

Small hands pressed against his back. A slim arm slid around him, and a high, young voice commanded, “Stop that! Go away!”

A loud HONK in Bucky’s ear was the response, but miraculously, the beating wings stopped as the creature flapped away.

Bucky raised his head cautiously, feeling like an idiot as he looked around for any sign of the goose. A trail of feathers and fluff and bemused faces indicated the path he’d taken through the marketplace, driven by the battering wings of the crazy bird.

With his blood pounding in his head and his breath panting in his lungs, Bucky stared at the goose as it landed, flipped its wings to its back and looked over its shoulder at him. Then it turned back and swaggered back along the trail of destruction it had created by beating Bucky up.

He didn’t usually deal with geese, so he had no idea of their usual behaviour, but...

Did geese usually swagger?

Hands turned him around. “Are you okay?”

The words, “ _I’m fine_ ,” died on his lips as he looked into a bright and concerned gaze.

Was he standing or falling? Bucky wasn’t sure. There was solid ground beneath his boots, and the warmth of small, strong hands seeping through the upper arms of his shirt. And there was the slim young woman standing in front of him, looking up at him with a wide-eyed startlement, as though someone had just given her a hard smack between the shoulderblades.

His hands had turned to cup her elbows, resting against the backs of her upper arms. His fingertips curled, stroking the soft skin there, and she shivered, an all-over quiver that Bucky felt in his belly—

“Your Highness?”

She dragged her gaze away from him, and Bucky wondered at the curve of her neck, at the delicate silver earring that dripped from her earlobes down to her shoulders – so impractical for a trip to the markets—

_Your Highness._

The air around him seemed thick, too thick to breathe. Shuri of Wakanda: sister to T’Challa, Princess by birthluck, already a Doctor of Technology and Science— Now that he could see her, he wondered that he hadn’t seen it straight away, although the images they'd been sent of her didn’t do her any justice.

Steve’s intended bride.

Oh, shit. Bucky made himself let her go, although his fingers didn’t seem to want to obey and insisted on clinging to her until his hands fell away, traceries of black shifting as—

Wait.

Traceries of black? Shifting?

Bucky stared at his hands, palms up, at the delicate curl in black that appeared on his skin. A crisp, clean line, it spiralled up and out from his palms, weaving across his skin in a delicate curl of blue-black that hadn't been there when he woke up this morning – or when he'd started walking through the marketplace.

He looked from his hands to the young woman staring at his hands. “But—” Her voice reflected her bewilderment, equal to his.

“Princess?”

She glanced briefly at the bodyguard striding towards them, her spear not quite poised to fire, and her hand rose in reassurance. “No, Eshi, it’s...it’s not...”

Bucky’s gaze followed the slender hand, her skin the color of the richest, deepest loams, now stained with a silvery glimmer – a delicate curlicue that swirled out into feathery leaves, like the first touch of frost in a Roanoke winter. He reached out and caught her wrist, gently, and watched the silver feathers blossom out into full leaves.

Someone gasped. It might have been him.

And she looked at her hand and the soulmark spreading across her skin with her soulmate’s touch, and then turned her hand against his, so their fingers were intertwined. And the delicate blue-black curl on Bucky’s skin spread in a wild and changing pattern at her touch in echo of her own moving silver markings.

“Goddess Bast,” said the guard.

Bucky didn’t know if it was a curse or a prayer – and with the warmth of her skin against his, he didn’t care.

“Who are you?”

It was a curious question – no urgency or need, no disbelief in her voice that she’d soul-bonded with a stranger in the middle of the marketplace a week before she married another man, just wonder and a need to know.

And Bucky answered with the only truth he had in that moment.

“Yours.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> A touch of worldbuilding. Think of this as the AU where Wakanda decided not to close its borders and ended up mitigating the colonisation of Africa. Also: the Roanoke settlement survived instead of the Puritan one, and an expedition comprised more of scientists and naturalists than religious refugees was the seed starter for America...
> 
> Oh, and there are geese of destiny. And soulmarks.


End file.
